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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made available the video recording of the presentation of the Scientific and Engineering Awards to Marcos Fajardo for the creative vision and original implementation of the Arnold Renderer, and to Christopher Kulla, Alan King, Thiago Ize and Clifford Stein for their highly optimized geometry engine and novel ray-tracing algorithms which unify the rendering of curves, surfaces, volumetrics and subsurface scattering as developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Solid Angle SL. Watch it on YouTube.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made available the video recording of the acceptance speeches of Luca Fascione, J.P. Lewis and Iain Matthews for the award presented for the design, engineering, and development of the FACETS facial performance capture and solving system at Weta Digital. Watch it on YouTube.

The latest version of ABSoft's noise reduction software for editing and compositing applications brings new tools and functions that help create more accurate noise profiles. New features include: (more...)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made available the video recording of Vladimir Koylazov's acceptance speech for the award presented for the original concept, design and implementation of V-Ray. Watch it on YouTube.

A great volcano simulation with breakdowns created by German artist Lennard Schmidt using FumeFX. Watch it on Vimeo.

A great project by Roy Peker that explains the concepts behind VFX and Digital Compositing. Watch it on Vimeo.

Imagineer Systems has released Mocha VR, a new plugin based on the company's planar tracking algorithm that brings VFX workflows to 360°/VR video production. The software offers features for handling motion tracking, masking, object removal and horizon stabilization. Mocha VR is compatible with Nuke, Fusion, Premiere Pro CC, Adobe After Effects CC and Avid Media Composer. The plugin version is priced at $995, upgrades from Mocha Pro 5 cost $300. The standalone version costs $1495. A rental option is available for $795 per year, for both multi-host plugins and standalone versions. More on Imagineer Systems' website.

Numerous young artists studying at MOPA who are seeing their career prospects sabotaged by the recent events, as well as their concerned parents, are seeking a way out of the crisis the school has been immersed in after the CIPEN (Cluster of Pedagogic and Digital Innovation) and the CCI (The Arles Chamber of Commerce and Industry) laid off director Julien Deparis, which resulted also in the departure of several instructors. Students have reported the loss of 12 hours of school in the past week for both 2nd and 4th year students, according to French journal La Provence. (more...)

Laubwerk has released a new collection of realistic 3D plants, Kit 10 provides a selection of temperate deciduous trees for use in parks, gardens or streets including specimen trees with floral display. Each species comes in 36 variations per species (i.e. 3 variants, 3 ages and 4 seasonal aspects), for a total of 360 models per Kit. Laubwerk Plants Kits bring tools that allow for quick adjustment of shape, age, season and level of detail for each 3D plant. The new kit is available for 3DS Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, SketchUp, Houdini and Python (Windows), and is priced at 149 Euro (w/o VAT). More on Laubwerk's website.

Ten years old, time has gone by fast! Congratulations to Kresimir Tkalcec and Sitni Sati on the anniversary and the great work. "FumeFX has been crafted in production and used by industry professionals for over a decade. This year we celebrate FumeFX ten years anniversary!". The first news we posted about FumeFX is from around July 2006, when it was still under development: "FumeFX at SIGGRAPH". And its official release took place on December 21st, 2006: "Burn!". Check out the news items along with the comments posted by readers for some good memories of that time, and watch the 10th anniversary related video posted by Sitni Sati on Vimeo.